The Sinking of the Battleship Bismarck

In May of 1941, the Bismar, a brand new German battleship, leaves Goen Haraven and enters the Baltic Sea. The plan is for the battleship to slip past British detection, move through the North Sea, and get into the North Atlantic to attack Allied shipping. The escort vessels of the Allied convoys will be no match for the heavy guns of Bismar. If the Royal Navy can't find and stop her, she will do fatal damage to the Atlantic convoys that are feeding and supplying Britain and keeping her in the Second World War. On the 20th of May, Bismar is spotted moving between Sweden and Denmark by a Swedish naval vessel. This information is shared through diplomatic back channels with the Royal Navy. To confirm the information, an aircraft is sent to the Norwegian coast. A Royal Air Force Coastal Command reconnaissance Spitfire slips past the German anti-aircraft defenses and takes an aerial photograph of Bismar near Bergen in Norway. This confirmation photograph leads to the battle cruiser HMS Hood and the battleship HMS Prince of Wales being dispatched from Scapplow to find and destroy the Bismar. The great pursuit has begun. Heat up here. With the growing threat to shipping in the Atlantic, Britain is struggling to keep her supply lines open. The situation is bleak for Britain, but the threat grows in 1941. The number of German Ubot in service reaches over 100 by April 1941 for the first time, creating more of a threat to merchant ships. Shipping losses amounting in spring of 1941 with 680,000 tons lost in all theaters from all sources, the highest monthly total of the war so far. Understandably, Allied leaders are concerned about the increasing losses. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill writes after the war that amid the torrent of violent events, one anxiety reigned supreme. Battles might be won or lost. Enterprises might succeed or misarry. Territories might be gained or quitted, but dominating all our power to carry on the war or even keep ourselves alive lay our mastery of the ocean routes and the free approach and entry to ports. As the number of Ubot is not enough to force a critical loss of Allied shipping, German surface vessels are employed in commerce raiding. The German surface navy is heavily outnumbered by the Royal Navy and due to this disadvantage, the German Navy uses its large surface ships in a series of short limited raids to disrupt Allied shipping in the North Atlantic. Operation Berlin is one such raid where the battle cruisers Shanhost and Nisenau sink or capture 22 merchant ships in the North Atlantic between January and March of 1941 with no German ships lost. By spring of 1941, German Naval Command knows they are at a crucial juncture in the war. Time is running out to knock Britain, her empire, her air forces, and particularly her navy out of the war before Hitler turns his attention to the Soviet Union. While the US is not in the war yet, Admiral Eric Rder, commander of the German Navy in 1941, also notes in his postwar memoir a concern among the German naval staff about the increasing American aid to Britain. Raider needs a major success against British supply lines to knock her out of the war. To obtain this success, the German Navy will send out its largest ship, the Bismar. This is Alex Pington, creator of the worldrenowned naval history YouTube channel Drekenfel. He is the author of HMS Belfast Naval History Special Editions for the US Navy Institute Press. The Germans were desperate to try and disrupt the Atlantic convoys. The Ubot were having some success, but not as much as they wanted. And up until this point in the war, German surface raiders had had a disproportionate effect on Royal Navy activities and the Atlantic convoys. The Bismar is a formidable ship. While naval vessels are usually referred to as a she, Bismar is referred to by his crew as a he. He has a maximum speed of 30 knots with a standard displacement of 41,673 tons. His armament is eight 15-in guns, 12 5.9 in guns, 16 4.1in guns, and 16 37 mm anti-aircraft guns. He has 12 1/2 in of belt armor, 3 1/2 in of deck armor, and four heavily armored gun turrets, two both forward and aft. >> The idea for the Germans was, well, now we've got these Bismar class ships coming online. Bismar was ready. Turpitz was almost ready. They thought, well, if we can send out a full scale battleship or battle ships ideally, and the original plan was to send out Bismar, Tpets, Shanhost, Angoniz now all at once, then that should be enough force to overwhelm anything the Royal Navy could put in their way. And then once they got in the Atlantic, they would have more than enough firepower to easily take down any reasonable convoy escort that the Royal Navy could put out there, which would mean they could then run rampant. And if the Royal Navy didn't have any battleships out there on convoy duty, then obviously they could split up and hit lots of convoys and bring the entire Atlantic convoy system to a grinding halt. At noon on the 18th of May 1941, Bismar under the command of Captain Erns Linderman slips his birth and anchors in Goenhan Bay to take on fuel and lastminute supplies. This is the beginning of Operation Rhab. The sea camp grouper meaning sea combat group is under the command of Admiral Ga Luten's fleet commander. A similar position to the British commander-in-chief of the home fleet. For the operation, he uses Bismar as his flagship. At 10:18 p.m., the heavy cruiser Prince Oegan leaves Gotenhaven, today's Gadinia in Poland. The next day, the 19th of May, Bismar follows at 2:00 a.m. These vessels are joined by several destroyers in support of the operation. On the 20th of May, at 1 p.m., Bismar is cited in the Katagat Strait, the body of water that separates Sweden and mainland Denmark by the Swedish cruiser Godland. This sighting is reported to Royal Swedish Navy headquarters. Colonel Alfred Rasher Lund, the Norwegian government in exile's military attache in Stockholm, learns of this information from Major Carl Pettison of the Swedish Secret Military Intelligence. As Sweden is neutral in the war, they can play both sides and use information when it best suits them. Knowing of the importance of this information, Rasher Lund gives it to the British naval attache in Sweden, Captain Henry Denon. The news of the sighting of Bismar is immediately radioed to London. The Royal Navy home fleet receives the news of Bismar's movements. So begins one of the most famous pursuits in naval history. The Royal Navy, however, is very aware that if Bismar gets out into the broad scope of the Atlantic, finding it's going to be very difficult, at which point any convoy is at risk. And at that point, actually having older battleships on convoy escort is more of a risk because you risk losing an old but still useful battleship in an engagement that it can't really win on top of the actual convoy. And it's not just about losing those individual ships. It's the fact that if Bismar gets out and starts hitting a convoy or convoys, then until she either runs out of fuel or is hunted down, every other convoy has to stop. Even once Bismar's out of the picture, whether that be through action or just through she goes back to port, you'll have such a snarl up of ships loaded on one side and unloaded on the other side of the Atlantic. It's going to take weeks or months to unpick that and get everything moving again. And that obviously then runs the risk of, well, do we try and surge everything out at once, at which point the Ubot just going, "Yes, please." So, you really want to stop Bismar before she gets out there and everything just goes to pieces. Seeing as the Royal Navy dominates the approaches to the North Sea, Bismar and Prince Oegan stick to the Norwegian coast in hopes of avoiding detection by the British. At 8:00 a.m. on the 21st of May, the Sea Camp grouper enters the Crossfield, one of the many passages from the North Sea to the port of Bergen in Norway. Bismar anchors nearby as the resupply takes place. They hope to remain undetected, but their luck is about to run out. At 1:15 p.m., Bismarck is photographed by a Coastal Command reconnaissance Spitfire piloted by Flying Officer Michael Suckling. The photographs are quickly developed and show what is described by intelligence reports as one Bismar class battleship and one Hippoclass cruiser. In his later dispatch about the pursuit of Bismar, Admiral Sir John C. Tovi, the commander-in-chief of the home fleet, writes about the surprise of this discovery because it seemed unlikely that they would stop at a place so convenient for air reconnaissance as Bergen. The resupply visit at Bergen is short as Bismar and the rest of the sea grouper departs at 8:00 p.m. The ships proceed to sea, heading north. At this point, British Naval Command is unsure where Bismar will attempt to break into the Atlantic. The battleship could move north of Iceland into the Denmark Strait, the passage between Greenland and Iceland. Alternatively, he could move through the many passages between the various island groups that lay between Iceland and Great Britain. The Royal Navy's response to the sighting of Bismar at Bergen begins early on the 22nd of May. At 12:15 a.m., battleship HMS Prince of Wales and battle cruiser HMS Hood, escorted by six destroyers, leave Scappa Flow in Scotland under the command of Vice Admiral Lancelot E. Holland, commander of the battle cruiser squadron. Poland is orders to patrol the Iceland pharaoh's passage north of 62° latitude for two decades. The battle cruiser HMS Hood is the largest ship in the world until she is finally surpassed in tonnage by Bismar. Commissioned in 1920, the mighty Hood is the epitome of the Royal Navy and of the British Empire itself during the inter war years. She is considered by most to be a very good-looking ship, and she conducts round the world tours to display British naval power. Much emotional attachment and pride has been bestowed upon her. At 2:00 a.m., a force of British aircraft arrive in the Grinstat field and bomb targets at the port, but are too late to catch the German capital ships in the Norwegian fields. At 4:20 a.m. the German destroyers are detached from the sea camper and returned to the cofield. Bismar and Prince Oegan will be on their own from now on. At 1:10 p.m. the Bismar's course changes towards the Denmark Strait. Unaware of this development, British cruisers HMS Norfolk and Suffukk are already patrolling the area. Admiral Frederick Wake Walker, commander of the first cruiser squadron, is tasked with taking Norfolk and Suffukk to find the Bismar. They are no match for Bismar's guns. And if found, they are simply to shadow the battleship and not to engage. At 9:00 p.m., Tovi learns that the Bismar has sailed from Grimstatfield. By 10:45 p.m., Tovi sails from Scapper Flow with his battleship King George V, his flagship, the aircraft carrier Victorious, and seven destroyers. They are to cover the passages to the Atlantic, operating south of 62° north. By the morning of the 23rd of May, more British reinforcements are committed to the search. Battle cruiser HMS Repulse and three destroyers of the Western Approaches Command join the pursuit coming under Tovi's command as they approach northwest of the outer Hepes Island. That evening, a major development takes place. At 7:22 p.m., Abel Seaman New Suffuk starboard after Lookout sites the two German capital ships at a distance of 7 mi, nearly 10 km. Suffukk's signal does not reach her co-archer, the Norfolk, because of icing on her aerials. At 8:30 p.m., the first engagement between Bismar and the Royal Navy begins. Bismar sightes Norfolk and engages her. The Norfolk, whose radar is inferior to Suffuk, runs straight into the enemy, but turns about at a range of 6 mi, launches smoke, and despite being fired on by Bismar's 15-in guns, safely retreats. Norfolk reports at 8:32 p.m., one battleship, one cruiser in sight. This is the first signal to reach Tovi of the position of the Bismar in the Denmark Strait. Suffuk's radio is still malfunctioning and cannot report. The British cruisers shadow Bismar throughout the night. As the 23rd of May comes to an end, there is a feeling the next day could be decisive. Aboard HMS Hood, Albert Briggs, a signalman, later recalls in his book, Flagship Hood: The Fate of Britain's Mightiest Warship, that Commander Cross confirms in a broadcast that the Bismar and a Hippoclass cruiser have been contacted and are being shadowed by the Norfolk and Suffuk. Briggs later remembered that Cross reported that we are expected to intercept at 0200 tomorrow morning. he confided. We will go to action stations at midnight. In the meantime, prepare yourselves and above all change into clean underwear. He recalls this last sentence galvanized the mesc where I had returned to collect a cup of cocoa. The only other time we had been warned to put on clean vests, pants, and socks in case dirty garments infected a wound was at Mel Kabir, where we had fired our guns in anger, although reluctantly. During the engagement with Norfolk, Bismar's own guns firing have damaged her forward radar, meaning that the crew are unable to detect targets in front of the ship. As a result, Prince Oegan takes the lead as they move closer to the Atlantic. On the 24th of May 1941, one of the most famous clashes of capital ships in the Battle of the Atlantic takes place. At 5:35 a.m., the arriving HMS Hood and Prince of Wales sight the German vessels. 2 minutes later, the German sea camper sightes them in return at a range of 17 mi or 31 km. The two pairs of heavy ships, at least on paper, are evenly matched, but the wind is blowing spray into the rangefinders of the British ships, limiting their ability to accurately fire their guns. At 5:52 a.m., the British ships open fire at a range of around 25,000 yd. Hood initially fires on Prince, mistaking it for Bismar before changing the target to Bismar itself. Signalman Briggs is on the compass platform when Hood begins firing. I could see our A and B forward turrets guns lift slightly. When the range was down to 13 mi, Holland said in a quietly modulated and polite voice, "Open fire." A minute earlier, the gunnery officers of both the Hood and Prince of Wales had been ordered by the admiral to concentrate their fire on Bismar, which he had told them was the left-hand ship of the fast approaching enemy. In the background, I could hear the helmsman repeating his orders and the closing ranges from the gunnery control position above us being sung out. Captain Kerr then ordered, "Open fire." From the control tower, the gunnery officer bellowed, "Shoot!" The warning gong replied before the hood's first salvo belched out in an ear pulsating roar. leaving behind a cloud of brown cordite smoke which swept by the compass platform. Seconds later, a duller boom came from our starboard quarter as the Prince of Wales unleashed her first 40in salvo. At 5:54 a.m., Prince Oegan fires back, followed by Bismar. 1 minute later, the Hood is hit by one of Prince Oegan's 8-in shells, which causes little damage. At 5:57 a.m., Prince Oegan switches its fire to Prince of Wales, while Bismar continues to fire salvos at Hood. At 5:59 a.m., Bismar fires its fifth salvo at Hood. At these distances, it takes the shells a full minute to reach their target. Signalman Briggs recalls seeing the Bismar shells coming into his view. My eyes were on the two ships rapidly becoming more visible on the starboard bow. They were still winking at us threateningly. But the next salvo was not just a threat. Not far from our starboard beam, there were two, no, three, no, four high splashes of foam tinted with an erupting dirty brown fringe. Then I was flung off my feet. My ears were ringing as if I had been in the striking chamber of Big Ben. I picked myself up thinking I had made a complete fool of myself, but everyone else on the compass platform was also scrambling to his feet. HMS Hood has taken a hit from one of the salvos fired by Bismar. Captain John Leech of Prince of Wales witnesses the intensifying scene. I happened to be looking at Hood at the moment when a salvo arrived and it appeared to be across the ship somewhere about the main mast. Leech feels compelled to continue looking at Hood as if something monumental is about to happen. The hit then triggers two massive explosions just seconds apart. The catastrophic blast rips HMS Hood in half. Briggs later recalls what happened after the explosion. Slowly the hood writed herself. Thank heaven for that I moment myself only to be terrorized by her sudden horrifying camp to port. On and on she rolled until she reached an angle of 45°. When everyone realized that she would not swing back to the perpendicular, we all began to make our way out in single file towards the starboard door at first. Then some turned towards the port door and attempted to break panes of reinforced glass in the forort of the platform. There was no order to abandon ship nor was a word uttered. It was not required. The hood was finished and no one needed to be told that. Within 5 to 6 minutes, the mighty hood, the longtime pride of the Royal Navy, sinks below the waves of the North Atlantic. At 6:02 a.m., Bismar switches fire to Prince of Wales and quickly scores hits. Prince of Wales also scores at least one hit on Bismar, causing an oil leak. 3 minutes later, Prince of Wales retreats from the battle. Bismar and Prince Oyen slip away towards the North Atlantic, still on their mission to harass the vulnerable convoys that are keeping Britain in the war. Many theories exist on what caused the catastrophic explosion aboard Hood. >> It's obviously a magazine detonation. The thing that's then been argued is what triggers the magazine detonation and what order does it happen in? And although obviously it's the main magazine detonation that blows the ship up, the main magazines aren't the thing that goes off first. >> Initial investigations explore if torpedoes on board Hood are responsible for the explosion. But the thing that's kind of really rules this out is the way that the ship is destroyed as described by multiple people who who witnessed it, which is that it's not a single explosion. It's two stages. First, you see this flame that people describe as being like a blowtorrch or a burner. So, a very directed almost jetlike flame that comes up from the base of the main master, which is actually quite considerable distance from the magazines that burns almost silently. So, it's a very high energy burn. And then less than a second later, the stern explodes with the magazines. And the only way that that works, it can't be the torpedoes cuz if the torpedoes exploded, there'd be the explosion out the starboard side. And they don't see it. No one sees that. >> The conventional view is that the arc of the shell trajectory from Bismar allows it to penetrate by plunging down through Hood's weak top deck armor and starts a fire in the magazine, which then causes the explosion. Alex Pington offers a different theory. The only real debate that's left is how exactly does the shell get there. The two main competing theories is one and it all rests on basically what is hood doing at the time because we know she has a signal up to turn 20° to port. Some people claim that she was in the middle of that turn and if she was then the ship would be tilting to starboard as she turns through to port because of inertia. If that occurs, then because the deck armor is now caned at an angle, a shell could theoretically come in above the 12-in main belt, through the 7-in upper belt, down through the deck, and into the magazines, and boom goes the ship. If Hood hasn't substantially started that turn and she's still on the course that we know that she was up until that point, then that mechanism can't actually work because if the deck armor is flat, it's got enough resistance to bounce the shell. And if the shell comes in lower to a point where it could duck in on a slow part of the deck is going to hit the 12-in armor, which again at the angle it's at will be enough to reject the shell. So, if she hasn't started the turn, then it's more likely that the shell hit the water just short of the ship, almost certainly in a dip, a trough caused by the bow wave, which is at the speed that she's going, roughly adjacent to the main mast, and then the shell skips underneath the main bell, into the turbine room, into the 4-in magazine, and up goes the ship. So, essentially, the the shell is arriving at the same place at the same time, doing exactly the same destructive effect. It's just the mechanism of how it gets there. and what analysis of the evidence you believe. I happen to believe that she was right at the very start of the turn. So, the order had been given on the bridge, but the signal flag had yet to be hauled down cuz there was a bit of a delay between those two things because of the distance between the signal deck and the bridge and the rudder has almost certainly started to go over. Of course, we we found the rudder gone over on the wreck. But the critical thing is, and you kind of need an appreciation of of ship handling at this stage to understand it, is that a ship that size of hood that's booking it on at 35 36 mph, just about 30 knots, maybe a fraction less, she's weighs 42,000 tons plus, she has a huge amount of inertia. You put the rudder over, she ain't turning immediately. You'll feel the ship shudder because there's differential thrust now, but that inertia means she will keep going in a straight line for a while. until eventually she'll start to turn. And well, anyone who's handled a big ship will I mean to be honest, even if you handled a narrow boat on a canal, people understand there's a certain delay between putting the wheel over and the you the ship actually doing what you want it to. So I think she was hit during that particular probably 10 15-second window because that's the only window where every bit of evidence that we have surrounding her destruction all can be correct. And if you go further back in time or further forward in time than that, you start having to arbitrarily drop bits of evidence for no reason other than you prefer this theory, which isn't really a sound way of doing it. >> Having abandoned ship, Briggs finds himself in the water. He recalls, "The suction was dragging me down. The pressure on my ears was increasing each second, and panic returned in its worse intensity. I was going to die. I struggled madly to try to heave myself up to the surface. I got nowhere. Although it seemed an eternity, I was underwater for barely a minute. My lungs were bursting. I knew that I just had to breathe. I opened my lips and gulped in a mouthful of water. My tongue was forced to the back of my throat. I was not going to reach the surface. I was going to die. I was going to die. As I weakened, my resolve left me. What was the use of struggling? Panic subsided. I had heard it was nice to drown. I stopped trying to swim upwards. The water was a peaceful cradle. I was being rocked off to sleep. There was nothing I could do about it. Good night, Mom. Now I lay me down. I was ready to meet God. My blissful acceptance of death ended in a sudden search beneath me, which shot me to the surface like a decanted cork in a champagne bottle. I wasn't going to die. I wasn't going to die. I trod water as I panted in great gulps of air. I was alive. I was alive. Briggs is one of three survivors from Hood's crew of 1,418. He manages to find a raft on the surface. After getting into it, he recalls, "About 50 yard away, I suddenly saw life from another raft. A figure on it began to wave at me. Parallel to this was another raft with a man flapping his arms. I tried to find other signs of life. There was none, just us. We all began to paddle towards each other. The two linked up first and then I puffed towards them. On one raft was able seaman Bob Tilburn and on the other was midshipman Dundas who had been on the compass platform with me. Briggs remembers that Dundas kept them singing roll out the barrel to ensure that they stayed awake. The survivors are spotted by one of the destroyers in the area. Slowly, HMS Electra approached my raft on which I was prostate. Then a rope sailed into the air in my direction. Although I could not feel my fingers, somehow I managed to cling onto it. The man yelled unnecessarily at me from the scrambling net. Don't let go of it. I even had the heart to retort, "You bet your bloody life I won't." Yet, I was too exhausted to haul myself in and climb the net. After nearly 4 hours in the sea, my emotions were a mess. Tears of frustration rolled down my oil categor. Several seaman dropped into the water and with one hand on the net they got me alongside and manhandled me up to the bent guard rail which had been battered by the stall and into the waist of the electro. Back aboard Bismar Luchians comes to a critical realization in their jewel with Hood and Prince of Wales. Bismar has taken hits and is leaking oil. Luchen knows that he has taken too much damage to continue the convoy raiding mission. He decides that he must sail Bismar to breast in France for repairs. Bismar's oil slick is giving Suffukk and Norfolk an easy shadow to follow through the waves while maintaining a safe distance. At this point, the reinforcements are approaching to join the chase. Aircraft carrier HMS Victorious, battleship King George V, and battle cruiser Repulse are moving in from the east. At 6:15 p.m., Prince Oegan leaves Bismar to continue on alone. To allow Prince to escape, Bismar turns and fires on the British cruisers pursuing her. No hits are scored on the cruisers, but Prince Oegan makes good her escape. It will all be for nothing as after parting ways before any merchant ship is even found defects are found in Prince Oyen's engines and on the 27th of May she is ordered to give up her mission and make for breast. Prince Oyen will reach the port on the 1st of June. Despite the climactic events, the sinking of Hood does not end the fighting on the 24th of May. Unaware that there is a Royal Navy aircraft carrier nearby, Luchians considers the use of air power against him to be unlikely. However, at 3:09 p.m., HMS Victorious is ordered to steer the best course to bring her within 100 m of the enemy and deliver a torpedo bomber attack on Bismar. There's a problem, though, as the need to react quickly to find Bismar creates issues for the crews aboard the aircraft carrier. Victorious has been rooted straight from exercises where she was introducing her new squadron of fairy swordfish torpedo bombers to ship operations. Her pilots lack combat experience and some have only performed a carrier landing for the first time days previously. Alex Pockington describes the Swordfish. >> It looks a bit like a relic of the First World War. It's not particularly quick, and against Germany's latest and greatest battleship that hasn't even been in commission a year, it looks like an antique. >> At 10 p.m., it is decided to launch the first strike force from Victorious, 120 mi from the objective. 10 minutes later, the fleet airarm joins the fight and nine Swordfish of 825 Naval Air Squadron fly off into the night. Despite the biplane aircraft being rather aged, it will prove itself to be a highly successful anti-ship warfare aircraft. By tonnage, it will sink the most axis shipping of any Allied air type in the Second World War. One of the Swordfish carries sophisticated air-to-surface search radar, allowing the aircraft to attack targets under the cover of darkness. The torpedo bombers locate Bismar at 11:30 p.m. >> If you're in fog, mist, rain, night, low light, you can still find a target and home in on it. It's not massively long range, but it's certainly much longer range than your eyes would be in those environments. And because it exists, it means that the Royal Navy is confident in training its pilots for night strikes because they know that they're going to have this to help find a target in the first place. So you kind of got a dualpurpose help there in that Boris' strike than the others, but its mere existence means that the torpedo bomber crews in the Royal Navy are far more capable and far better trained and far more willing to engage in all sorts of weird weather conditions than they perhaps otherwise might be. >> At 12:15 a.m. on the 25th of May, Bismar is attacked by the Swordfish aircraft. The inexperienced crews have a difficulty getting visual on Bismar, but eventually make their attacks under heavy anti-aircraft fire. One torpedo hits the midship, but causes no significant damage. At 1:31 a.m. on the 25th of May, Prince of Wales and Bismar exchange fire, but no hits are made on either ship. Bismar then alters calls and gives his pursuers the slip at 3:15 a.m. Contact with Bismar is lost. 15 minutes later, instructions are received by Force H in Jibralta, comprising aircraft carrier Ark Royal, battle cruiser Renown, and light cruiser Sheffield to move out to hunt and intercept Bismar from the south. Sensing that their chance to catch Bismar is slipping away, Royal Navy commanders now also commit battleship HMS Rodney and cruisers Dorsucher and Edinburgh to the hunt. Five further destroyers, including one Polish, are retasked from escorting the nearby convoy WS8B to attempt to further limit the movement of Bismar. RAF coastal command aircraft drop mines on the approaches into breast. Britain's immense naval and naval air power is being committed in forts to find and destroy Bismar. Luchian makes a fatal mistake. At 9:30 a.m. He transmits a radio message to the German admiral about the sinking of Hood. Radio direction finders across Britain pick up the message and are able to broadly triangulate Bismar's position at each messages transmission. On the 26th of May, at 10:30 a.m., Bismar is spotted by a Catalina flying boat, which reports its location. The problem to overcome now is that Bismar is still matching the speed of the Royal Navy ships, and to catch it requires slowing the massive battleship down. Another aerial attack is sent out. At 2:50 p.m., 15 Swordfish take off from the aircraft carrier Ark Royal. 15 minutes later, the first flight of Swordfish begin their attack on Bismar. Or so they think. The pilots mistake HMS Sheffield for Bismar and launch 11 torpedoes equipped with magnetic detonators. Two of the torpedoes explode on hitting the water and three more nits crossing the wake. The remainder are avoided by Sheffield. Due to the faulty detonators and the maneuvers from Sheffield, the cruiser escapes being hit. Luckily for the air crews, Sheffield realizes this is a friendly fire incident and does not fire a single round at the attacking swordfish. When they land back at Ark Royal, the crews relate to the weapons mechanics that the torpedoes had detonated immediately on contact with the water. The mechanics deduce that the detonators must be faulty and replace them with contact detonators for the next attack. The near friendly fire incident has meant that a critical lesson has been learned. 15 Swordfish are again launched. They plan to attack from different directions almost simultaneously. At around 7:15 p.m., the next round of Swordfish attack Bismar. Unfortunately, the overcast skies and enemy fire leads to aircraft getting separated or lost. Swordfish pilot subie tenant John Moffett recalls in his memoir his torpedo run on Bismar. The Germans in their big battleship were trying to kill me and it was not pleasant. I continued to drop height with Bismar blooming bigger. Some of her guns flashing from amid ships with vivid orange flames now aimed at us. The big explosions that had blown us about did not follow us down to this height. But the smaller cannon and machine gun fire with their red tracer bullets were coming towards us in a torrent. As he gets closer to Bismar, Moffad hears his observer, temporary subleutenant JD Dusty Miller, shouting into his ear, "Not yet. Not yet." And I thought, "Has he gone mad? What is he doing?" Miller is leaning out of the cockpit to make sure that Moffett does not fire the torpedo into the crest of a wave from which it may be knocked off course. Moffett continues, "We were getting closer and closer. The ship was getting bigger and bigger and I thought, bloody hell, what are you waiting for?" Then he said, "Let her go, John." And I pressed the button on the throttle. Dusty yelled, "I think we have got a runner." In the confused fighting, Bismar is hit by two torpedoes. One hits a midship and the other hits the starboard quarter, which jams the rudder. Bismar loses speed and nearly all steering. John Moffett later writes about his war experience. Whether or not it was my torpedo that hit the Bismar stern and made her uncontrollable does not really matter to me. What is important is that I along with the rest of my colleagues did it. Previous historians have done an analysis of the exact flight paths, the likely drop points, where the torpedoes would have gone, Bismar's course, etc. And the majority have concluded that it's John Moffett's torpedo that is the most likely to have scored this hit. One of the other three pilots is basically eliminated on the basis of the flight path. He's in the right area at the right time, but his drop is almost certainly completely off. And then there's another pilot, I believe, is called Patternson or something close to that. And his descendants have made a case that he's actually the one who's responsible for it. It's possible because at the time the Royal Navy wasn't divvying up precise credit, but on the balance of evidence at this stage, I'm more comfortable with the traditional interpretation of it being John Muffett's torpedo. I'm not saying 100% it definitely was cuz I wasn't there. But I would say probably 80 85% likelihood. The vulnerability of the large capital ships to torpedo carrying aircraft is made clear by the strikes on Bismar. Moffett later writes that these are the most powerful and modern battleships in the world. Yet, despite all the technology, the highly advanced gun control, the massive armor plating, and the powerful turbines, all had come to nothing. They had set out just a few days ago, the pride of the German Navy with Hitler's blessing. Now, because of a slow singleengineed biplane launched from an aircraft carrier, they were almost impotent. Despite its aged design, the Swordfish has several advantages. >> As it turns out, it manages to obviously stop, well, at least slow down Bismar enough for her to be stopped. But that's partly down to the courage of the pilots, partly down to the fact that the swordfish actually turns out to be incredibly damage resilient because although no swordfish are shot down by Bismar, an awful lot of swordfish that get back are described as having a lot of holes in them. And that's simply because an awful lot of the explosive cannon rounds that are being flung out by the anti-aircraft guns on Bismar, they're fused to explode when they hit something. But to not explode just by being fired, they need to have a certain sensitivity. Turns out with the swordfish, if a shell hits the canvas, it'll just go straight through the canvas out the other side, and it never senses anything heavy enough to actually detonate. And so the swordfish come back with an implausible amount of holes, but they all come back. A torpedo strike from a seemingly antiquated aircraft has left the Bismar without steering and unable to escape the Royal Navy warships coming to hunt him. The end of Bismar, Hitler's pride, draws near. Despite her loss of maneuverability, Bismar's large guns are still dangerous. At 9:30 p.m., the massive ship fires on HMS Sheffield, but no shells hit the British cruiser. At 9:40 p.m., Luchians radios Germany, reporting that Bismar can no longer maneuver. The fastest and first ships to arrive to reinforce the cruisers are the Polish destroyer Pura and three British destroyers. They begin to harass Bismar. Commander Aogenosh Puavski is the captain of Puran. He is seeking revenge for what is being done to his homeland by the Germans. Puavski orders his destroyer to charge Bismar alone. Using a signal lamp, Puki orders the transmission of a message to the big ship Yestm Pakium, which means I am a pole. He orders open fire on the Bismar. Sources aboard Puran claimed that his order to commence fire was three salvos for the glory of Poland. The little destroyer and Bismar jewel, but no shots land on either ship. Having delivered her message of defiance, Puran pulls back. She and the three British destroyers continue to harass Bismar. With his steering knocked out and knowing that the Royal Navy is coming to hunt him, he realizes that his battleship is doomed. At around midnight, he sends a message to Germany. Ship unmaneuverable. We shall fight to the last shell. Long live the furer. Overnight, the Royal Navy prepares for the final attacks on Bismar. While destroyers harass the battleship with torpedo attacks. It is unclear if any of these torpedo attacks are successful. British crews claim to hit the battleship, but Vismar's crew later state that no hits were recorded. The constant harassment prevents the ship's crew from sleeping, putting them on edge. Burkard von Mullenheim Recberg, an artillery officer on Bismar, later recalls the toll the fighting was taking on those aboard. Down in the engine rooms, where endurance had been strained to the utmost during the destroyer attacks, things were calmer that morning. The tension and stress of the last hours gave way to irresistible fatigue. 4 days without sleep were too much, and they had been followed by this frenzied night. Men, hardly able to stay on their feet, lay down where they were, and slept the sleep of exhaustion. Some of them were aroused only by the firing of our guns and the explosion of enemy shells. Despite not being able to move under its own power, Bismar is still a threat as her guns can still deliver devastating salvos against the Royal Navy's ships. On the 27th of May at 8:45 a.m., Bismar is cited by the battleships HMS Rodney and King George V. 2 minutes later, Rodney opens fire, followed a minute later by King George V. Both battleships foremost guns fire their first salvos. 4 minutes later, Bismar returns a full broadside against them. The 55second flight time of the massive barrage is tense for all involved, but the shells fall short of the British ships. Cruiser HMS Norfolk joins the engagement with her 8-in guns at a range of 8 mi. King George V and Rodney turn to bring their broadsides to bear and cruiser Dorsucher joins the engagement. This mark is beginning to take hits to her superructure which ignite deck fires. Like a heavyweight boxer looking for the knockout blow, battleship HMS Rodney aggressively charges in to brawl with Bismar at close range, pummeling him with broadside after broadside. A shell lands danger close off Rodney's starboard bow. This shot is the closest to a direct hit the British ships receive during the final engagement. At 8:59 a.m., Rodney sends a massive 16-in shell at Bismar. The shell destroys the main gunnery directory, making his ability to fire back accurately nearly impossible. At around 9:00 a.m., the return fire from Bismar begins to wne under the ferocious bombardment. Her forward A and B turrets are put out of action. Rodney moves in yet closer, pounding away at Bismar with continuous devastating broadsides. The shorter range secondary guns on King George V are also brought into action. Between 927 and 9:30 a.m., Bismar's aft C and D turrets are no longer able to return fire as the ship's deck burns. All of Bismar's main guns have been silenced. The massive ship never raises a flag of surrender, and the British ships continue to release salvo after salvo from close range. The mighty Bismar has taken a beating, yet remains afloat, just barely. Smoke pours out from fires burning throughout the ship. At around 10:00 a.m., orders are given to scuttle Bismar, an abandoned ship. Controversy exists about the claims that Bismar is scuttled by its crew. >> I think most of the survivors and pretty much every serious historian or naval architect all agree Bismar was going down. It was just a question of how fast. So if the scuttling charges were set, at best it accelerated things very slightly. But fundamentally that ship was going down. That's the myth part. Where I stand on that spectrum is I've done a lot of research and I'm continuing to do more research on it. I'm currently leaning a little bit towards the side of I think maybe the scuttling story was made up after the war to justify some of the survivors actual survival. Partly because some of the other stuff that the survivors who talk about scuttling charges say doesn't make sense. Some of it is disprovably false. And at best, even if you accept everything that the the people who were there who say that Scuff and George was set, you know, even if you accept everything that they say, at the very best, it's an unauthorized action that they took to give them a reason to leave the engineering spaces. 24 minutes later, Dorsucher delivers the Cuda Grass to Bismar. Two torpedoes are fired at the ship, followed by a second salvo 6 minutes later. >> If you read through any extensive number of the survivors accounts, you realize just what an absolute hell it was at that last minute because you have people realizing that every single major escape route is blocked, the conventional escape routes. So you have people climbing up communications passages because all the ladders, all the hatchways are destroyed or areas above it are destroyed, bits plate around fire. They're finding absolutely every possible exit they can and some of them aren't. And then there's an account of a large group of men and they're all waiting their turn to go up this little communications tube that's mostly for wiring. And then the ship takes a hit in the side. There's a massive explosion and most of the people who were waiting in the queue are just dead. I met one Bismarck survivor before he passed away years and years ago and he mentioned that when he was trying to get off the ship, one of the biggest problems was actually getting from where he was sheltering in the superructure to the side of the ship because there were fires and pits in the deck where he could look down and he could see just a glow in the hole of the ship and just so just navigating safely to get over into the water was hard enough. Other survivors in the water talk about the fact the fires internally were so intense towards the end that as the ship began to list. Every time it listed a bit further and more hole came into contact with the waves, there would be clouds of steam billowing up because the hole was so hot. >> Burkart vonmulenheimber recalls his harrowing experience getting off Bismar. While the little group I was with was waiting to starboard forward of turret Dora, the Bismar sank still deeper by her stern, and her list to port increased. The gradual emergence of more and more of her hull on the starboard side told me that the moment to jump was approaching. It's that time, I said. Inflate your life jacket. Prepare to jump. It was vital not to go over the site too soon. Now it was vital not to delay so long that we would be sucked down with the ship when she finally sank. I called a salute to our fallen comrades. We all snapped our hands to our caps, glanced at the flag, and jumped. In the water, we were pushed together in a bunch as we bobbed up and down like corks. At first, we swam away from the sinking ship as hard as we could to escape her suction. When I got clear by some 150 m, I stopped and turned around for one last look and to take in everything I could about her. Moffett and the other Swordfish pilots are in the area to attack Bismar again. Their support by this point is not needed. Moffett is flying above Bismar as he begins to sink. We got to a range of about 1,000 yd flying low with what was now the Hulk of Bismar in front of us. And then I saw a sight which has remained etched in my mind ever since. This enormous vessel over 800 ft long. Her gun turrets smashed. Her bridge and upper works like a jagged ruin slowly, frighteningly toppled over, smashed down into the sea, and her great hole was revealed. The plates and buildills glistening dark red as the oily sea covered her. Still leaping from her were men, sailors, and there were hundreds more in the sea, some desperately struggling for their lives, some already inert, tossed by the waves as they floated face down. I saw these hundreds of desperate human beings in the water, and I was immediately pierced by the knowledge that they had no hope, and that as I flew just 100 ft above them, there was nothing that I could do to save even a single one. Moffett later confessed in his book, "All I know is that there has not been a single day of my life when the image of those poor men struggling in the freezing oily water has not entered my mind, and I do not expect to see a day when it doesn't." Whatever was the final cause, at 10:40 a.m., Bismar slips below the waves to the bottom of the Atlantic. 116 survivors are recovered from the water by British ships including HMS Maui and Dorsitra. Some are rescued by U74 and the German weather ship Sashinvald. The Spanish cruiser Canelas also takes part in the search for survivors but only recovers bodies. Burkard von Mullenheimber is eventually rescued by Dorsucher. he recalls falling back into the water after being lifted towards the deck. After getting my breath, I looked for and found another line with a bow line. I glanced up and there were the same two seammen. Unwittingly, I had returned to the same line. They hoisted me up again. This time I kept both hands on the line and said, "Please pull me on board." They did. And there I was, standing on the upper deck after of the second port lifeboat, a prisoner of war in an oil stained uniform. The threat from a possible nearby German Ubot forces the remaining British ships to withdraw, leaving many Bismar survivors to perish in the cold waters of the North Atlantic. After the sinking, Admiral John Tovi writes, "The Bismar had put up a most gallant fight against impossible odds worthy of the old days of the Imperial German Navy, and she went down with her colors flying. The sinking of Bismar is a major blow to the morale of Germany. There's some argument back and forth afterwards, but effectively it is the death nail of German heavy surface raiders in the North Atlantic. It also results in the German command moving away from using German battleships to attack supply convoys in the Atlantic. Admiral Eric Raider will later write, "The sinking of the Bismar was to have lasting effects upon the whole naval warfare for the rest of the war." Hitler's attitude towards any suggestions or proposals advocated by me was now completely different. Now he issued directives to me that radically restricted the movements of these major units. He forbade their sorties into the Atlantic. The success we had had even with our inferior forces through bold initiative and the taking of calculated risks was to be a thing of the past for us. The naval war was given an entirely new face after the sinking of HMS Hood. The Royal Navy also changes how they engage with German surface vessels. After that battle, Royal Navy instructions from really on high come down as we don't really care whether it's fair or not. If you have the opportunity to completely and utterly overwhelm the target, you completely and utterly overwhelm the target. How the Allies go after Bismar's sisterhip, the Turpets, is one example. >> Whereas perhaps 1939, 1940, they would have been, "Okay, well, let's let's let her come out and fight us." By the time you get to Turpets, they're just going, "No, we'll throw the fleet air at it. We'll throw Xcraft at it. We'll throw tall boys from Lancasters at it. We do not care. You are going to die as soon as humanly possible." And you kind of see this go through the Royal Navy. They are much much less laidback and much more kind of bring maximum firepower to bear whatever the cost. >> Turpitz is used sparingly during the war and is eventually sunk by allied bombers while anchored at Tumzo in Norway in November 1944. The German Navy shifts from surface raiding to submarines to sink Allied shipping in the Atlantic. The Yubot is the largest threat that the German Navy can bring against the Allies after the sinking of Bismar. Initially, the submarines wreak havoc on Allied shipping. With the American entrance into the war, the crews of the Yubot enter what they call the second happy time. By 1943, however, the Yubot threat in the Atlantic is largely contained due to technological advances and improved tactics. The German submarine will continue to sink Allied shipping, but the Allies will dominate the ocean for the rest of the war. Thanks again to Alex Pockington, creator of the outstanding naval history YouTube channel, Drakinfel. He also contributed to a book on HMS Hood by Key Publishing and he is the author of HMS Belfast Naval History Special Editions for the US Navy Institute Press. us.